


Speechless, I See

by TheMoments (TBs_LMC)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Dalish Elves, Emerald Graves (Dragon Age), Epic Battles, Falling In Love, First Time, Flirting, Flowers, Gift Giving, Healing, Latin is Tevene, M/M, Mage Inquisitor (Dragon Age), Magic, POV Dorian Pavus, Phobias, Poor Dorian, Romance, Scents & Smells, Skyhold (Dragon Age), Slow Build, Slow Romance, Tevene (Dragon Age), The Hissing Wastes, The Western Approach, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28247022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TBs_LMC/pseuds/TheMoments
Summary: Dorian doesn't understand love. Doesn't know how to recognize it. Doesn't really get why the Inquisitor wants to take their relationship slow. Until he does.Also, Dorian worships the Inquisitor. A lot.
Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	Speechless, I See

**Author's Note:**

> In this five thousandth play-through of DAI, my male Inquisitor is a Dalish elf whose first name is Pippin. Complexion and makeup-wise he looks like Gordon from the anime "Black Clover," though not quite that pronounced. :-)
> 
> I was curious about the option offered during the bedroom scene for the Inquisitor to tell Dorian he wanted to take it slow. This story is what happened as a result (though I'm terribly peeved that I missed out on yet another perv of Dorian's naked body to try it).
> 
> Also one note: the part about Dorian and enclosed spaces is not specifically canon-compliant, but since we can assume we do not see and hear absolutely everything that happens to these guys when we're not directly playing them, I maintain it's compliant enough to squeak past the censors.

**SPEECHLESS, I SEE**

* * *

What had Pippin expected from him? A Dalish elf, the most gorgeous thing on two legs in Thedas, had Dorian wrapped around his pinky finger. Had him staring as he spell-canceled so effortlessly, something Dorian had only ever been able to do upon his _own_ spells, never someone else’s. How he excelled at fireballs and freezing targets as equally as lightning bursts. How he slayed demons, closed rifts, faced down massive darkspawn hellions. How everything he did, could do or had done seemed so effortless, seamless. And now he’d added the mantle of Knight-Enchanter with a spirit sword that rivaled anything wielded by The Iron Bull.

Again, all so seemingly effortless, barely breaking a sweat even when fights dragged on and on and even when their toughest warriors and most wily rogues were panting and drenched to their smallclothes.

How could any one individual so obviously blessed and raised up by the Maker himself, never mind Andraste, want to have a _relationship_ with _him_? It wasn’t just the whole male thing, though that would certainly have canceled it all out back in his homeland. It was so much more than that. He started to get a funny feeling like maybe he understood Andraste a little more than he’d ever considered. For he, much like her, seemed to have fallen painfully, desperately and gloriously in love with nothing less than a god.

And oh, how he worshiped him, though perhaps not entirely for the same reasons as Orlais and Ferelden. He had hung upon the Inquisitor’s every word for so long that he could finish nearly every sentence in his mind, accurately, even down to the inflection. And oh, how jealous he was of the man’s affections. So tactile, these proper Dalish. Or perhaps that was just Pippin’s way and not all Dalish? Dorian had never been able to summon enough nerve to inquire, fearing either way the elf might take it – asking because he didn’t like it or asking because he liked it a little too much.

But then…stolen glances in a library nook. Small smiles after a battle. Closeness round the campfire in the Dales. Sorrow for the misfortunes of his ancestors. Excitement discovering secret runes, the wildness of veilfire, the Dalish clan who mistrusted and yet honored in the same breath. Pain passing fleetingly across his smooth, exotic features in the Emerald Graves over the silence of his gods, gone from the people upon the whims of Fen`Harel, leaving them all alone to contemplate how to find what no one remembered having lost.

And then Magister Halward Pavus had accomplished the one thing he’d wanted so desperately to undo with a blood magic ritual, all because he’d wished for the Inquisitor’s resident Chantry Mother to go behind Dorian’s back and bring him to a secret meeting for whatever his father’s reasons were. Only the elder Pavus hadn’t considered the upstanding, kind, compassionate nature of a creature he knew only as someone who should be a slave when he’d made his inquiries of Mother Giselle.

In those moments when Dorian had finally confessed what had gone so terribly wrong between him and his father, when it was all he could do to not openly sob when looking at the face of a man he had idolized for his entire life up until the point he’d discovered the depravities his father was considering, that was when it happened.

Pippin wasn’t so different from Dorian after all, in spite of their species and birthplaces and ways of life.

Upon their return to Skyhold, Dorian had retreated. Shame and sadness and pain – he’d had his fill for the day. And then like the coolest, most soothing salve any mage or healer could concoct, Pippin’s steadfast presence behind him, gentle words spoken in lilting baritone, opened Dorian’s mouth to speak, opened his heart to truth, opened his mind to the fact that life _could be different_ than the one he’d fled in Tevinter.

His soft, soothing almost melodic words. Everything in him invited Dorian to speak openly. Freely. No matter what was happening with all of this Corypheus business or his own personal trials and tribulations, Dorian had realized in Redcliffe that he could trust the Inquisitor.

“Living a lie,” he whispered, once his head had stopped spinning with his own thoughts, “it festers inside you. Like poison.” He half-smiled, so uncomfortable baring his own soul and yet unable to stop himself, lost in ethereal charcoal-lined eyes that seemed to see right through his skin into his very heart. Prompting, “You have to fight for what’s in your heart.”

“I agree.”

Whispered. Stolen. Had he heard him correctly? A fog descended upon his consciousness the moment the elf took a step toward him. And then another. And another. And suddenly he was right there, and Dorian could feel his breath on his mouth the fraction of a second before their lips met soft and yet firm, hesitant and yet certain.

Everything in him sighed into the essence of whatever Pippin Lavellan actually, truly was, for the feelings elicited in his body and soul from that brief kiss alone had felt like magic igniting the very heavens, not unlike the rifts that, of course, only the Inquisitor could heal. Funny how that worked. Maybe the Inquisitor’s entire reason for being sent wasn’t to defeat Corypheus _per se_ but to heal rifts of every kind.

Dorian mumbled something semi-coherent about Pippin playing with fire. Deflected, pulled away, talking of getting drunk and yet still inviting the Inquisitor should he care to join him.

And now this. This moment, where weeks of dancing around each other like…well, Dalish elves all light on their feet…had culminated in Dorian literally not being able to stand it anymore. He couldn’t tell what Pippin really wanted because he burned so hot and bright that getting too close to him inevitably fried every nerve Pavus had, practically negating his ability to read tells or interpret body language.

Luring the Inquisitor to his room. Pippin studying something while he waited, or maybe just waiting because he knew. He seemed to always know everything. Dorian resorting to the best course for the only path he was aware of – the only one that’d ever been open to him. If they were going to do something, might as well start it and blow off the excess steam that was making his trousers far too tight, far too often, just from glancing at the curls and dips of a certain eye-surrounding tattoo.

“So…” Dorian’s heart fluttered as he emerged into the sanctuary of Pippin’s rooms. He tamped it down, sliding back under his charming sexually charged, carefully-constructed persona. “…it’s all very nice, this flirting business. I am, however, not a nice man.”

Pippin said nothing. He just watched, expression uncharacteristically indecipherable.

“So here is my proposal.” Because everything is about gaining the upper hand, making the first move, controlling every situation so you come out as good as you possibly can from it in the end, regardless of the outcome. “We dispense with the chit-chat and move onto something more _primal_.”

And if Dorian’s dick hadn’t just twitched as he already had undressed the Inquisitor mentally several times, but had no idea truly what he looked like under those far-too-tight-too-be-an-accident casual clothes.

“It’ll set tongues wagging, of course. Not that they aren’t already wagging.” Keep talking, keep talking, never let silence envelop because silence can be dangerous. If you keep talking they don’t have a chance to react.

“I suppose it really depends.” He saw, almost felt, the Inquisitor’s brief shiver as he walked behind him and leaned in so close he could barely keep his hands from seizing the man and simply throwing him down on his ornate golden bed. “How bad does the Inquisitor want to be?” Oh, The Grand Game of Orlais had nothing on The Grand Game of Tevinter. And Dorian was as much an expert in that, as Leliana was in hers.

“Do we need to move things this quickly?”

Dorian was taken aback, flummoxed by the question. “Quickly? By my standards, we’ve been positively chaste.”

“It…” For the first time, Dorian saw hesitation in this face he’d grown so obsessed with. “…seems a little sudden.”

Dorian’s thought processes ground to a rather uncomfortable halt, confusion mounting, heart preparing to be shattered as usual. “What is it you want from me exactly?” And then it dawned on him and yet he disbelieved and so asked, “A relationship?”

And with all of his usual confidence, Pippin asked, “Is that such a terrible idea?” like it was the most natural thing in the whole world to expect. But it wasn’t. Not for Dorian. It never had been. Or could’ve been. He turned away. His brain had stopped working. His heart hadn’t shattered. On the contrary, it was now thudding in a way that made Dorian feel like he was about to expire.

“You’re speechless.”

He hadn’t stayed that way for long. He’d gotten his kiss. He’d walked away without the baring of skin that he’d been partially hoping for and partially dreading since things usually ended after that no matter how fun it had been.

But what a world being speechless had opened up to him. For those times, though they’d never happened often in the past, had increased exponentially over the following months.

_“What is this?” Dorian looked at what the Inquisitor held out to him as they huddled in one end of a broken-down hut trying to avoid the blasted Mire’s ever-falling rain, while Bull’s broad body shielded Cassandra in the only other place with a partial roof, which was a half-propped-up lean-to out back._

_“It’s a flower called Andraste’s Grace by the_ shemlen _,” Pippin explained as he brought the bloom to Dorian’s nose. “Leliana told me about them. She said that her mother used to lay them in with her clothes, so that she always smelled this way. It was very special to her and so when I saw this one bright spot in the midst of all this dull and grey and ugly place teeming with Undead, I thought perhaps to save it, as a gift to her upon our return.”_

_“You need me to preserve it,” Dorian stated even as he inhaled one of the most heavenly scents he’d ever encountered in Nature. Yet he couldn’t help but be disappointed that the admittedly beautiful bloom was not for him. If his magic was needed, the Inquisitor would be likely to bring him along for every outing. He could live with that no matter the reason._

_Pippin leaned in close as he lowered the flower that was in his left hand and lifted his right, caressing Dorian’s cheek with something soft and silky. Dorian’s eyes flicked down to see an identical flower. “This one, however, is for you,” Pippin whispered, before placing a gentle and dare he think it, chaste kiss upon Dorian’s lips._

_He took the flowers and preserved them both, but knew exactly at all times which one was his. His heart fluttered in his chest. Butterflies danced in his belly._

_What was this feeling, exactly?_

The care and concern – Dorian had literally never been treated this way in his entire life. Even as a child, when he fell, strict nannies ordered him to stop crying no matter how many wounds he nursed or how bruised his ego may have been. A tumble down the entirety of the grand staircase in the foyer of the Pavus mansion had nearly broken every bone in both arms and yet through all the pain of healing spells and blood magic that fixed him, he was not allowed to feel that pain. It was a weakness. Something nobody was ever allowed to see, for it meant there were flaws that could so easily be exploited.

_Dorian’s blood was racing as fast as his breaths were coming. He whirled and casted and shot bolts of lightning at the giant spiders that seemed to be crawling from the very walls of the cave at this point. Oh, how he hated the Western Approach and its blasted caves and its stupid mining history and the sand and the dry air and…blackness crowded in on his vision, spells casting on automatic now, panic truly setting in._

_Someone shouted his name. He felt himself go down. Felt legs – no,_ feet _– wrap around him and wondered if the spider’s poison would take him quickly or if he’d be wrapped in a cocoon to die a slow, miserable death being liquefied. Such a pleasant thought._

 _As he came to, he smelled the burning torch, saw its flames light the mining shaft_ that they were still in _and heard in the distance their two warrior companions bashing in what he presumed to be giant, disgusting spiders._

_Hovering over him, cradling his head, the Inquisitor. “Dorian, thank Mythal, come back to me.”_

_“What...?”_

_“It’s all right. The spider got hold of you but I froze it and Cassandra shattered it before it pierced you with its fangs. You…”_

_Twin cries of victory further along the shaft told them that Bull and Cassandra had succeeded and that all was safe for the moment._

_“You seemed to…have some sort of…you froze up.” Pippin seemed disconcerted as Dorian struggled with his help to come to a sitting position. “You were still casting but…you weren’t there. It was like…a panic of some sort, I think.”_

_Dorian swallowed, mortified. “I have a problem,” said with sweat pouring down his temple, his neck, soaking him, “in enclosed spaces.” He huffed out a not-laugh. “I fear being enclosed in tiny places that could fall on me, trap me, kill me. You know, the sorts of situations you enjoy dragging me into out here.”_

_He tried to smile. Couldn’t. Started panicking again when Bull’s huge, hulking figure made it even more obvious how tiny the passageway was._

_Bull’s eyes flicked to the Inquisitor, then to Dorian. “Boss, I want outta here. My horns keep catching on the rafters.”_

_Dorian kind of loved Bull a lot right in that moment, but moreso Pippin when he surreptitiously cast some kind of spell Dorian would later discover was a negate spell of another sort. It cleared Dorian’s mind enough for him to get up under his own steam and walk out with some pride intact._

_Later, behind one of the tents of their Inquisition camp, came, “I’m sorry, Dorian. I won’t ask you into the tunnels again. Why didn’t you just tell me?”_

_“Saving face?”_

_A soft, loving look barely perceivable in the dying light of evening. A hand against his cheek. “Your face will always be worth saving.” A quick, soft press of his lips and the Inquisitor was gone into his tent to rest._

As with everything else he did, in this new game Dorian had never before played, which Varric informed him was Love with a capital L, Lavellan was perfect. Not that Dorian had anything to compare it to, stack it up against. This was new. Not just new, but somehow exciting and terrifying at the same time. After two months of flirting and four months of tenderness, he trembled when the Inquisitor approached. His voice wavered during intimate one-on-one conversations. His hands shook when moving chess pieces while Pippin, seated across from him, seemed the perfect picture of grace and steadfastness.

He wanted. Oh, how he wanted. And yet some part of him felt as though touching Pippin in any sort of sexual way somehow demeaned him. Made him an object of desire rather than an image of perfection. Who was Dorian to spoil flawlessness with his dirty thoughts, his physical needs? His love, this thing so foreign to him, grew and grew and grew to the point where he was almost unable to function when Pippin walked into his sphere and didn’t _that_ get inconvenient during their strike team forays into the wilds of Thedas?

The breaking point for Dorian came when the Inquisitor called him to what he had confessed was his favorite secret room in all Skyhold. It was a small reading room Pippin had found during their early days in the castle, just off the dining hall that was big enough, as he had said, to store an army in. When the elf had stumbled across it, the door had been difficult to open and beyond it the tomes and tomes of books had seen the room become a special place for them to spend time together once Pippin had cleaned and dusted.

No one else seemed to even know this part of Skyhold existed, and Pippin wanted it that way. “This is our place, Dorian. Mine and yours. Alone,” he’d said with such fondness it had made Dorian’s teeth ache. Only later had he learned that Pippin had convinced Solas to place unique wards on the entrances that made them essentially invisible to anyone not the three of them…but Solas himself never came here beyond that, apparently.

A runner had brought Dorian a message to come to The Place while he’d been in his room, dressing after a bath. He’d been mooning over his Inquisitor and the bathwater had gotten cold and blast it all, when were his head and heart ever going to be on straight again? He knew the answer to that: never.

And he didn’t care one iota for the fact that everyone gave him grief over being in the clouds all the time because when push came to shove, they gave Pippin just as much shit as they did him and it was truly a novelty for Dorian to have a _boyfriend_ and for _everyone to know_ and for _everyone to be okay with that_ and for everyone and their brother to be _rooting_ for them. Well, except for the tongue-waggers, but they’d have wagged their tongues even if one of them hadn’t been a male Dalish elf and the other hadn’t been a male Tevinter and neither had been a mage.

Dorian smelled something delicious and, curiosity piqued, entered the reading room sometime later to find a cone of incense burning in a bowl in the middle of the room’s single desk. Beneath the bowl was a note on a small square of parchment. Written in perfect Tevene: _Tu me in toto corde eram concludens in carcerem._ His heart skipped a beat. “You imprison me in your heart?”

With a fond smile, Dorian realized this was a game. The Grand Game of Thedas wasn’t the same as that in Orlais, not at all. No, this was a game of the heart, and the clue was in the note. He picked it up and left the reading room, heading for the prison cells on the lowest level of the castle.

He took a deep breath and opened the door. The ever-present fire burned and crackled in the pit in the center of the main room of cells. They never had fixed up the ones beyond that had crumbled, and the cells were occupied so seldomly it was quite far down on the list to be tackled. There was usually a guard here, just to be sure some insane person didn’t try getting into the castle through said gaping maw, but right now it was devoid of any persons at all. Dorian walked along the cells, which were all closed and locked, save for one on the opposite side from where he’d begun looking.

Crossing the gap quickly, he moved to the open door and found a single Andraste’s Grace bloom lying on the cot inside. Beneath its stem was another note that said: _Amor meus armis. Esse noscuntur, quod in arma protegit.._ “Your love, my armor,” he murmured, then inhaled the flower’s scent. “Your devotion, the weapon that protects.” His chest constricted. Maker’s breath, Pippin really _was_ going to be the death of him. But what a way to go.

Dorian’s next destination, the Undercroft, where armor and weapons were fashioned and improved. He passed through the great hall as nonchalantly as possible, trying to seem unhurried, wondering if Dagna would start pestering him again about his admittedly exceptional necromancy specialization. She was a cute dwarf in her way, all bubbles and sunshine, but it was like being attacked by the most pernicious beast imaginable if she caught your ear, for once she got her claws in it was difficult if not impossible to extricate oneself.

But nobody was in the Undercroft at all. Dorian didn’t often visit smithworks, for he was the one who ordered the things these machines made, not created them. Some of these contraptions looked downright ominous. It took a few moments of him walking around and looking at each of them to discover what might have been left for him here. It was hanging from the surveyor’s transit on the balcony overlooking the waterfall.

Dorian’s face heated to burning as he realized these were smallclothes and although he’d never personally seen Pippin’s, it was little enough of a leap to know they had to be his. And tucked within the fold of them was another small square of parchment which read: _Somnia non semper impletur._ “Oh,” Dorian breathed. “My dreams are always filled with you.”

Both the Inquisitor’s wardrobe and his bed were in one place and one place only, and a thrill zapped through Dorian head to toe as surely as if he’d just hit himself with one of his own lightning bolts.

Dorian grabbed the smallclothes and the note, noted how his pants were rubbing him in an oddly painful and pleasurable way all at the same time thanks to his far-too-hard dick, and tried his best to figure out how to walk with his normal foot placement and hip swagger as he crossed the room, went up the steps and stopped at the door, hand hovering over the latch.

 _Deep breaths, deep breaths_.

He opened the door, exited the Undercroft, closed the door behind him and without looking at anyone in the great hall, or noting whether any of them were looking at _him_ , he crossed with great purpose to the door directly opposite, opened it, closed it behind him and let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding as he leaned back against it.

The same incense was at work here. Pippin knew this was his Tevinter mage’s favorite, from fond memories of studying under Alexius, of Felix sneaking into his father’s study to, over time, become the only true friend Dorian had ever had until he’d joined the Inquisition. Inhaling first of the air and then of the flower again, Dorian tried to move quietly up the many, many steps that wound around to the Inner Sanctum. It was a place he’d only been a handful of times.

Once during the aforementioned time when he’d thought to hop into bed with the Inquisitor because he couldn’t handle the suspense anymore. Once when Pippin had asked him into the private study to review Dorian’s secret consultations with Maevaris regarding little-known facts behind the tales of the old gods, about the state of Tevinter, but most importantly about the Venatori and what was happening in the Imperium while the unacknowledged bastards were slowly trying to invade their southern neighbors in the name of a darkspawn magister’s delusions of grandeur.

The third time Dorian had climbed these steps was a day when he’d been hunting high and low for Pippin, concerned over his missing dinner, only to find the man had fallen completely exhausted into his bed upon returning from the Hissing Wastes. Luckily their travel portals kept them from the bulk of what would have been terribly long absences from Skyhold, but that didn’t make what kept them out in the field any less tiring, especially with the Tomb of Fairel quest they’d wound up undertaking.

That’d been the reason Dorian hadn’t been brought along. His fear of enclosed spaces, _locis inclusa timere_ as it was known in Tevinter, was something that Pippin neither spoke of nor reintroduced to him – unless it was something that caught them unawares, in which case the elf always did everything possible to get Dorian out of wherever it was as fast as he could, and cast the mind-clearing spell frequently, with no one the wiser as to reasons.

That third time, Dorian had simply stood at the side of the bed watching Pippin sleep. Reveled in staring unabashedly. Wanted so desperately to touch. Didn’t want to be that creepy guy seen lurking if the elf awakened unexpectedly. Resigned himself to having multiple fantasies about this one incident alone. Moved on.

The fourth time was when Josephine had asked Dorian to take the Inquisitor’s evening meal to him in his rooms, as the man was intending to be holed up in his private study all night reviewing the strategy for the attack on Adamant with Cullen, Hawke and Alistair. He played at being affronted by her use of him as a servant but was secretly pleased and guessed she probably knew that and had done it on purpose.

That had turned into an interesting evening, for Hawke had asked him to stay after, as he’d put it, “Being informed by your Inquisitor that you’ve a good head for how to use mages for cover in a nasty fight without killing people.” The ‘ _your_ Inquisitor’ had not been lost on Dorian, whose eyes had met Pippin’s briefly before he swaggered into the small group seated around the desk. That’d been an all-nighter, but it had been worth it two days later when Adamant fell with a minimal loss of life.

The last time Dorian had been here had come after yet another Adamant-related issue, that of falling into – and then escaping – the Fade. Alistair had not returned. Dorian had felt awful, but he barely knew the man other than what he’d seen and heard while trapped there. And of course all the legends surrounding the Hero of Ferelden. Of more concern to Dorian had been Pippin’s well-being, and thus when they’d finally returned home with the Grey Wardens as Inquisition allies to fight for as long as they could against the demons and darkspawn making their way to the light of day, Dorian had been unable to stay away from Pippin’s rooms that first night.

Good thing he’d gone to check on him, too, because Pippin had not been in a good place mentally. It was the one and only time Dorian had ever seen him be anything but perfect, poised and altogether amazing no matter the circumstance.

It took almost the entire night for Pippin to finally confess _why_.

_“I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I’m the one who took us all there. We were trapped because I opened a rift. Now Alistair is gone. Dead? Who knows? But he’s gone. And that’s on me.”_

_“But you saved the rest of us. No one would have survived the fall when that bridge collapsed. All would have perished.”_

_Pippin sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about the fact that I led_ you _there. Given the Corypheus tie to Tevinter, given everyone’s mistrust of you as it is, and I just gave them more fuel for their fires of hate.” He had looked up at Dorian from his place out on the balcony leaning against the wall. Tears were in his eyes. “It’s always dangerous. Everywhere we go, everything we do. But I had condemned you to_ hell _.”_

No words could be said, for the Inquisitor had set himself to feeling guilty and Dorian couldn’t – nor did he have the right to, really – stop him from what he felt. He just sat down next to him arm to arm and allowed himself to be the rock for a change. It was as this thought was occurring to him that he saw one final note tucked into the door jamb of the closed door that led to the steps that would take him up to Heaven…Pippin’s room.

_Amica mea, vos estis, ancoram iacio._

Tears sprang to Dorian’s eyes. “My love,” he whispered, “you are my anchor.”

He nearly collapsed from the sheer force of the emotions that coursed through him, _slammed_ into him like Bull on a rampage charge, more like it. _So this is love_ , sang out in his mind and he opened the door, hanging onto it for a steadying hand, very nearly gasping through parted lips, clutching the smallclothes and the flower and the notes as he quietly closed the door behind him.

He climbed the stairs, unaware how in blazes his legs were even moving. Emerged into the sanctuary. Froze. It was all there…candles, incense, flowers. A single red rose lay atop – Dorian gasped. In the middle of the bed, on his back but propped up against the headboard on pillows enough to see him quite clearly, was Pippin. And he was completely naked. Dorian’s face – and every other part of him – heated up again, this time to an almost uncomfortable level.

Atop the elf’s chest lay the reddest rose Dorian had ever seen, and he wondered fleetingly if that had been from the plant Morrigan had been tending with her magic in the garden the past three months. The woman was surprisingly gentle and caring if you caught her off-guard, and they’d become something approaching friendly as a result.

Pippin was breathtaking. Dorian didn’t know where to look first. The elf, thin and gangly and yet somehow completely perfect in every way, was beyond beautiful. Dorian couldn’t move. He was…what was this, exactly?

“Don’t forget the last note,” was the sultry answer to the unasked question.

Dorian swallowed hard, but his throat had gone dry. He approached the bed _WITH A VERY NAKED PIPPIN_ his mind screamed at him, saw a square of parchment, picked up the rose _my fingers brushed his bare chest_ and the note and forced himself to read the words through the haze of love, lust and almost painful perfection of the moment.

“ _Si erit mihi ego tibi usque in aeternum_ ,” Dorian read aloud.

“If you will have me,” Pippin said in Common, “I am yours.”

Dorian melted. Knelt at the side of the bed. Grasped his beloved’s hand. Laid his forehead upon his bare chest. Whispered, “I love you.”

“As I love you,” Pippin replied, carding his fingers through Dorian’s hair. “Your turn.”

Dorian looked at him quizzically. Pippin smiled that lopsided smile of his and tugged at the pin holding one side of Dorian’s toga-like sash in place.

Suddenly everything was on fire. And it had nothing to do with magic. At least, not _that_ kind. _It…seems a little sudden._ Finally, Dorian understood.

“Speechless, I see,” Pippin observed as Dorian rose to his feet and began to disrobe.

And so he was.


End file.
